Leadership Potential in Nursing | SMART Goals

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1NURSING
Introduction
The chief purpose of this essay is to demonstrate an insight into my leadership potential as a
potential nurse leader. In order to become an effective healthcare leader, it is highly crucial for
an individual to have adequate self awareness that understands of one’s strengths and
weaknesses (Fischer 2017). Along with an in-depth understand, an efficient nurse leader requires
having the capability to analysis contemporary nursing leadership theories and developing
effective plan to deal with his/her weaknesses. In this essay, a detailed discussion of leadership
theory styles within the context of the NHS and specifically nursing has been performed.
Additionally, in this essay, I have discussed about a my own leadership style, specific situations
that helped me to identify my strength and weaknesses. Finally on the basis of my discussion, I
have developed a plan to eradicate my weakness with the help of SMART goals.
Body of essay
Leadership has been defined by NHS leaders as an individual's actions when leading a
group's efforts towards a common objective. The main facets of leadership position are to affect
community behavior and to deal with transition. A challenge in contemplating healthcare
practitioners' leadership is that most ideas were not formulated within a framework of healthcare,
but were usually established for the business environment and only extended to health care.
According to Sir Bruce Keogh, the medical director of NHS, Health care failures are usually
the product of lack of expertise and clinical leadership (Keogh 2013). After conducting a review
in NHS England, Keogh stated that lack of efficiency of nurse leaders to manage the staffs and
retain efficient nurses has resulted in enhanced mortality rate at 14 NHS trusts. Additionally,
disconnection between board level and clinical level leadership within the organization has been

2NURSING
pointed out to be another major issue. Similar leadership issues have been detected in Francis
report. The study investigated what led to inadequate health care quality, premature patient
deaths, and why there was little awareness of the warning signs of significant deficiencies. It has
been found that inefficient leadership of the nurse leader have resulted in deterioration of
healthcare due to high attrition rate of skilled nurses (Fischer 2017). In order to deal with high
mortality rates due to low quality care provided to patients, the Berwick’s report has suggested 4
aims to be followed by the nurse leaders:
 Putting the standard of health care, in particular, health safety of the patients, first and
foremost (Lynch et al. 2018)
 Involving, motivating and listening patients and careers at all times
 Promoting the growth and advancement of all staff, including their capacity and
encouragement to enhance the systems through which they operate
 supporting openness unambiguously and anywhere in the field of accountabilities
Special training needs to be provided to the nursing staffs by the leaders so that they can
demonstrate effective compassion and in practice. According to Transactional nursing theory,
nurse leaders should have effective understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses
(Andrigue et al. 2016). Not only has this, a culture of learning and transparency as per Keogh’s
review, needed to be implanted in order to enhance the skills of employees so that higher quality
of care can be provided. Additionally, NHS has launched a long term plan. The 10-year program
includes steps to reduce 150,000 cases of heart attacks, strokes and dementia and increased
access for adults and children to mental health facilities (Plan 2020). The Long Term Strategy for
the NHS is a revolutionary framework for increasing the quality of patient services and health